I guess it isn't as rare as I thought, but I don't think this one had anything to do with an easy winter. This winter has been rough no matter how you look at it. Before we received a lot of our snow we had sub-zero temperature for days on end. Many days in late Dec. and throughout January were 30 below at night and had highs of zero or colder during the day.
It then warmed up some, but then we got storm after storm of heavy snowfalls. I still have almost 2 feet of snow anywhere on my property. I'm afraid we're going to have a hard winter-kill this year.